Scripture: Acts 11:1-18 Sermon: All God’s Children, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching Focus: Justice and inclusivity of God’s love
This Week’s Music
Prelude: Fughetta, Sigfried Karg -Elert; Jonas Nordwall, organist
Anthem: Jubilate Deo, Benjamin Britten; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
Offertory: Like As The Hart Desireth The Waterbrooks, Herbert Howells; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
Postlude: Praise the Lord with Drums and Cymbals, Sigfried Karg -Elert
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Author: Rev. Jeremy Smith Published: May 13th, 2013
Date: May 12, 2013
Title: “For Us or With Us”
Preaching: The Rev. Jeremy Smith
Scripture: Ruth 1:6-18
Introducing the Scripture:
The book of Ruth is an Old Testament story hundreds of years before Jesus that contains hidden ironies known only to native Hebrew speakers. It begins with a famine covering Bethlehem, which means literally “the house of bread.” Naomi marries into a tribe of Ephrathites, meaning “fruitfulness” and yet the whole tribe dies out without any fruit—children—to show for it. They die leaving Naomi to fend for herself and her two daughters in law Orpah and Ruth.
And more than that, it is a story of Ruth, who is a detested Moabite, which is what Ducks fans are to Beavers fans, and Beavers fans are to Ducks fans. And yet she exhibits a faith surpassing the Hebrew people. The final irony and lesson for us is that even an outsider to the beloved people of God can be incorporated into God’s plan for God’s people—indeed, only four women are mentioned in the Geneology of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, and Ruth is one of them. Listen now as Cheryl reads the Scripture for us about Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth.
Scripture: Ruth 1:6-18
Sermon
I have a confession to make to you this morning. I’m in my thirties but I’m pretty sure I’m turning into a curmudgeon.
Because I find that holidays disappoint my expectations. The more you read about holidays, their origins, and their current forms, it seems that every holiday is watered down in some way from its original intent.
Obviously Christmas is made to be more about gifts bought for each other than about Jesus’ birth.
Easter is made to be more about bunnies that lay eggs rather than Jesus
Thanksgiving is made to be more about meals and turkeys rather than enemies seeking reconciliation for however short a time.
Martin Luther King Jr Day, Veterans Day, and Fourth of July are more about having a day off than honoring our fallen heroes. Worst of all is Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts is more about a day off to run the Marathon and go to a Red Sox game than to honor our veterans. Perhaps after this year, they should rename it “First Responders and Police Officers” Day.
And today being Mother’s Day, we have strayed far from its original intentions, though to be fair, its original intentions did not even last as long as its originator was alive.
The original Mother’s Day proclamation in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe was not a rhyming poem on a greeting card, rather these are sections from it:
“Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
We, the women of one country, Will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
Mother’s Day in this country began as a cry for peace. This proclamation is more than tender reverence for mothers; it is a cry of protest amid a violent nation. Mothers everywhere are called to say no to violence and yes to peace, called to reveal God’s love for humanity in a resolute stand against the world’s warring madness.
The other name most associated with Mother’s Day is Anna Jarvis. She lobbied for Mother’s Day but then a decade after its creation she turned against her own invention. She wanted Mother’s Day “to be a day of sentiment, not profit.” She crashed meetings, protested florists and greeting card industries, and got arrested to stop the commercialization. It’s said that when she went to eat at a restaurant and they had a “Mother’s Day salad” on the menu, she ordered it, paid her check, and then threw it on the ground in a huff. To her, Mother’s Day had been taken over and she fought its recognition for the rest of her life until she died at 84 years old…the bill for her final arrangements paid for by a group of appreciative florists.
I have a theory this morning. My theory is that holidays begin to fall short of their intent when we focus more on the word FOR rather than the word WITH.
It seems that the word that epitomizes Holidays is “for.” We cook Easter Ham “for” our family, we buy presents “for” others at Christmas, we offer to do chores “for” our mother on Mother’s Day…all to say we lay ourselves down “for.” But there is a problem here. All these gestures are generous, and kind, and in some cases sacrificial and noble. They are good gestures, warm-hearted, admirable gestures. But somehow they don’t go to the heart of the Holiday problem. Doing things for other people isn’t nearly as important as doing things with other people.
What if holidays were more about who we spent it with rather than what we bought for them? What if the national holidays were days were we spent time with our wounded veterans and working with those seeking justice and equality rather than time set aside for a day off? I suspect we would turn back the clock and restore such holidays to their intent as being not for the named persons but with the named persons.
I’m convinced of theory because in the Scriptures, God is lifted up as “with” us not just “for” us. Today’s scripture is of a mothering spirit between Naomi and Ruth. They were not related by blood—Ruth had married one of Naomi’s sons. The sons and the father were all dead, and the three unrelated widows including Orpah were left on their own. Naomi tells the daughters to go back home and to leave her—there is no Jewish prohibition against widows leaving one another or a daughter in law abandoning a mother in law. Orpah obeys her mother in law and returns home. Ruth refuses and pledges that “where you go, I will go” and eventually changes Naomi’s mind. Orpah chose to do something “for” Naomi and satisfy her wants, but Ruth chose something “with” Naomi to satisfy her needs.
The simple truth is that “for” is not the way God relates to us. God does not simply do things for us. God does not simply shower us with good things. “For” is not the heart of God.”
Theologian Sam Wells writes that in Matthew’s gospel, the angel says to Joseph, “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’” And then in John’s gospel, we get in a single sentence the Cliff Note’s succinct statement of what the Christian faith means: “The Word became flesh and lived with us.” With us. “The Word was with God. The Word was in the beginning with God. Without the Word not one thing came into being.”
“With” is the most fundamental thing about God. Jesus’s very last words in Matthew’s gospel are, “Behold, I am with you always.” In other words, there will never be a time when I am not “with.” And at the very end of the Bible, when the book of Revelation describes the imagined end of the world, this is what the voice from heaven says: “Behold, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.”
Throughout Scripture, God said unambiguously, “I am with.” Behold, my dwelling is among you. I have moved into the neighborhood. I will be “with” you always. My name is Emmanuel, God “with” us. Sure, there was an element of “for” in Jesus’ life. He was “for” us when he healed and taught; he was “for” us when he died on the cross, rose from the tomb, and ascended to heaven. These are things that were done FOR us, certainly. But the power of these things God did “for” us lies in that they were based on his being “with” us. God has not abolished “for.” Doing things FOR others is fine. But I’m convinced that doing things “for” others follows a commitment to be with others.That is the good news of the incarnation.
On a day like today, it is perfectly appropriate to describe God as “with us” while lifting up the motherly images of God.
One of my clergy friends in New England wrote the following: Scripture after Scripture describes God not as a conquering king but as a loving mother: God is a woman in labor whose forceful breath is an image of divine power; God is a mother who does not forget the child she nurses; God is a mother who offers comfort with her children; God is a mother who births and protects Israel; God is a mother who gave birth to the Israelites. The early scripture writers understood the ways in which the Divine is known to us through our mothers and those who offer a mothering spirit to us. Through this human love we come to know divine love in God, as we are birthed, fed, nurtured, comforted and cared for.
Lest you think that Mothering is all about soft-focus pastels on the Lifetime channel, God’s love as mother is also portrayed as fierce. In scripture we read of God as a Mother eagle and mother bear, fiercely protecting their young against life-threatening situations. Jesus himself is described as a mother hen who gathers with her brood, shelters and cares for them, to instruct and teach them in the ways of the world.
The Good News for us today is no matter what our gender is or what our family looks like, we can live into this mothering spirit of being present WITH one another rather than simply doing things FOR one another. And in doing so, we live into that fierce protective spirit found in the Bible as God cares for the marginalized and the oppressed.
I spent some time in the Library this past week reading old sermons. For at least the latter years of Dr. Ray Balcomb’s tenure here, he would do biographies on Mother’s Day, outlining the life of a courageous woman who exemplified a mothering spirit even if she wasn’t a biological mother to anyone. People like Eleanor Roosevelt, Anna Howard Shaw, Susan B. Anthony, and others. And in each one, I was started to become critical (a curmudgeon, remember? Don’t cut my mic off, Gene) because there was no sermon intro or conclusion, no wrapping up their lives in scripture or prose, but simply outlining their service alongside the marginalized and allowing their lives to stand alone as testimony to the God who is with us.
We live into both the biblical narrative and our historical traditions when we choose to serve with and alongside one another rather than simply doing things for one another. This Church 20 years ago began a Shelter for homeless families. And there were concerns! We were inviting people to be here and to eat meals with them and spend the night with them. How much less scary it is donate a canned good for someone or donate clothes and items for someone. But this church persevered and now service with and alongside the marginalized is part of our DNA, passed down to every person who comes through the door, choosing to name each one as a beloved child of God. We rose to the occasion.
Twenty years ago this year, our church was in the midst of many transitions not only with the Shelter. The church voted to become Reconciling 20 years ago, we’ll celebrate that milestone in two weeks. Your senior pastor Larin Hall died a few months after leaving the pulpit, embodying what it meant to be a suffering servant. The new wing and Chapel were built to invite even more of the community to be here with us. I’m convinced that if you were here during those formative years of 1992-1994 that there’s something grafted onto your spirit that recognizes the value and strength of ministry with one another.
The challenge from scripture and elder stateswomen and men of our past is to respond to the marginalized in society. We are great at “for” we have successful offerings for groups and individuals and sometimes all they need is what we can give for them. That’s fine. But in what way will you choose to serve with? Will it is be serving in our Shelter? Will it be advocacy for marriage rights for all? Will it be reaching out to that family that you’ve never spent time with? What will it be?
The choice is yours. And the Good News is: you are not alone. God with us, Emmanuel, is with us. Glory be to God. Amen.
Scripture: John 14:8-17; Acts 2:1-21 Sermon: A Wild Dove, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching Focus: Gift of the Holy Spirit in the life of the individual and the community
This Week’s Music
Prelude: Alle breve pro organi pleno, J. S. Bach; Jonas Nordwall, organist
Anthem: The One Hundred Fiftieth Psalm, Howard Hanson; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
Offertory: The Call, Ralph Vaughan Williams; Benjamin Bell, soloist
Postlude: Psalm 19, Benedetto Marcello
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Scripture: Ruth 1:6-18 Sermon: For us or With us?, Rev. Jeremy Smith preaching Focus: Beyond serving for others towards serving with one another, celebration of Mothers in all their forms.
This Week’s Music
Prelude: Concerto No. 4, Vivaldi/Bach; Jonas Nordwall, organist
Anthem: The 23rd Psalm (dedicated to my Mother), Bobby McFerrin; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
Offertory: Te Deum Laudamus, Cathy Moklebust; The Sanctuary Bells, Nancy Hascall, director
Postlude: Prelude and Fugue in D Major, H. W. Nicholl
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Scripture: 1 Timothy 4:11-14 Sermon: A Constant Message in a Changing World, The Youth of Portland’s First United Methodist Church Focus: A Constant Message in a Changing World
This Week’s Music
Prelude: Allegro (Concerto in A), A. Vivaldi/J.S. Bach; Jonas Nordwall, organist
Offertory: Lord, I Lift Your Name on High, arr., Arnold B. Sherman; juBELLation, Karin McDonough, director
Preparing our Hearts For Holy Communion: I Love to Tell The Story, William G. Fischer
Postlude: Final (Symphonie No. 2), Charles M. Widor (1844 – 1937)
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Author: Rev. Jeremy Smith Published: April 22nd, 2013
Date: April 21, 2013
Title: “The New Creation”
Preaching: The Rev. Jeremy Smith
Scripture: Romans 8:18-25
The New Creation
What a week.
As a preacher, we stand, like you, with what Kart Barth called “a bible in one hand, a newspaper in another.” One is eternal and challenging but predictable to preach from, and the other changes rapidly. A bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday, an earthquake killed 35 in Pakistan on Tuesday, Ricin laced letters sent to elected officials on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Senate failing to act on gun control on Wednesday, an explosion in West Texas killing 14 people on Wednesday night, a shootout and police casualty at MIT on Thursday night, an unprecedented Boston lockdown and a successful manhunt that did not result in more loss of life on Friday. An earthquake in China killing over 180 people happened on Saturday. That scribbling sound you heard each night was preachers writing prayers for the victims and rewriting their sermons to reflect the world’s events. But this is Sunday, the beginning of a new week, where we gather. Some are perhaps hoping for a narrative to make sense out of senseless death and human failings. But I suspect some are just hoping for a blank slate, a reset button where the horrors of last week are forgotten, looking for Good News after the Bad News of last week. We want something new.
This week we continue our sermon series called “The New Normal.” We are focusing on what has changed after Easter, what has changed to the followers of Jesus after he was resurrected and what has changed in our own lives now. Our scripture today, chosen a month ago and relevant no matter the news, speaks of the whole earth groaning in anticipation, pregnant with possibilities. Like the people in the Roman church, we yearn for the release of something new being born, the release of 1 week, 9 months, years, decades of pain and discomfort. But there’s a difference between our situation and the Roman situation. In Paul’s writings, he expected Jesus to return in his lifetime, so for the long-suffering followers of Christ in Rome and all the other places, all they needed to do was hold on a bit longer and the New Creation would take place. They had to be faithful for another few months or years, and they would definitely see the return of Christ. For us, 2000 years later, that expectation, while still part of our hope and expection, is less a guide for our day-to-day living than it was for the Roman church. The Old Creation has not passed away, we still live between the times.
So how do we navigate this tension between the old and the new creation? On this Earth Sunday where a week like ours has us questioning the goodness of our human and our natural world, how do we navigate being faithful to God while wanting to hit the reset button. I’d like to start with the tale of two Bostons. First is the Boston of 2013, people running towards the blast, people who ran 26.2 miles and ran a few miles more to Mass General to give blood, people opening up their homes to displaced runners who couldn’t reconnect with the finish line meetup spot. Story after story of help and support, which is surprising because Chelsea and I lived in Boston for six years and compassionate is not the term we would use to describe Bostonians.
But there was also the Boston of 2009. I was in my third year of pastoring a local church in Boston when on a Sunday morning, Helen Jackson, an 82 year old woman got her scarf stuck on the metal grating at the bottom of an Escalator. She was pulled down to the ground and suffocated to death over the course of two minutes where people just walked by, assuming she was sleeping or homeless or who-knows-what and the two passerbys who tried to help were unable to get a knife or scissors or anything to cut the scarf from anyone walking by. She died and people just kept walking by in a 2009 version of Kitty Genovese.
The two stories of Boston beg the question. In both cases, people were dying, hurt, in need of help. So what was the reason why people helped in droves in 2013 but others kept walking in 2009? What changed between those two worlds? I think it comes down to tipping points. What pushes us to act, what pushes us down the hill? What causes us to turn the corner? A visible explosion and a visible need for help? People respond. An elderly inner-city person stuck on the escalator where people sleep and drunk people fall over? People walk by.
What is the Tipping Point when we are willing to help? Our televisions seek to push us over the tipping point and open our wallets. TV commercials with starving children pleading that for only 19 cents a day you can feed others. The ASPCA commercials with rows of shelter pets and Sarah McLachlan singing that you can save these abused animals. Entire cable news networks whose sole purpose, after they make money, is to push you over the tipping point and hate everyone that they want you to hate. Our human psyches are often either really vulnerable or completely immune to the media’s pushing of us over those tipping points.
But the truth is that our natural world also encounters tipping points, times when humanity, as stewards of Creation, have to decide to act even if there’s no obvious disruptive danger. There are tipping points in nature where things just don’t go back to normal. In Greenland the ice sheet there is bright and reflective and redirects much of the sun’s heat. But in recent decades, the more ice is melted, the less sunlight is reflected, and the more ice gets melted, and the less sunlight is reflected, and so on. We’ve reached what scientists believe is a tipping point, a negative feedback loop from whence it will be very very difficult to recover.
That’s the bad news. But hear the Good News. The tipping point for us to change our lives, our families, and our natural world is present already. There are two ways to live into the New Creation written about in Romans. The first is to see that before we can truly be part of the New Creation, we need to be in love with the current Creation around us. This New Creation, according to Paul, started with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, it started earlier with Jesus coming into the world and providing a way, according to John 3:16. However, the farmer and writer Wendell Berry takes it back even further than that. Quote: “People who quote John 3:16 as an easy formula for getting to heaven neglect to see the great difficulty implied in this statement: that the advent of Christ was made possible by God’s love for the world–not God’s love for Heaven or for the world as it might be, but for the world as it was and is. Belief in Christ is thus made dependent upon prior belief in the inherent goodness–the lovability–of the world.” The pattern of salvation is that God loved the world first and then sent Jesus to inaugurate the New Creation through community and spirit.
In Romans, the birth pangs follow a pattern too, starting in the world. They start in the world, then they go to the community of the church, and then they go to the spirit. John Wesley, founder of Methodism, felt this same pattern. Wesley’s emphasis on “cleanliness” came as he observed a world of open sewers, impure water, unplanned cities, and smoke-filled air. In the mines and mills of England, squalor and filth were everywhere, as was disease. The substantial decline in the death rate in England from 1700 to 1801 can be traced to improvements in environment, sanitation, and a wider knowledge of concepts of basic health such as those advocated by Wesley. The birth pangs of a new way to live began in the world, moved to the Church through Wesley, and now that sense of connectedness is part of our DNA, born of the Spirit anew in each church across the globe. We are called to live at the overlap of the New and the Old Creation. Not to passively wait for the New, or reject the Old, but to live in the tension.
The second hope for us today is how to be part of the New Creation in everyday ways. That tension of being between worlds can get the better of us sometimes. This past week, day after day, news alert after news alert, text message after text message “have you seen the news?,” the tension has us in its grip. But we are not without hope. From the Book of Discipline, the book of United Methodist doctrine, it states: “We assert that God’s grace is manifest in all creation even though suffering, violence, and evil are everywhere present.” Even though violence and spectacles get most of our attention, our everyday attention ought to be in small, incremental changes. The way the natural world works gives us much-needed guidance. So much of environmental change and preservation is as slow as those ice sheets melting in Greenland. But each community that does choose the small actions, the different levels in your bulletins, they choose to be part of the solution–the agonizingly slow, methodical, and quiet solution–rather than contribute to the problem.
In short, this is a very Methodist way of dealing with the issue of the environment and of a world that some weeks is full of pain and suffering. John Wesley was on a boat with some folks and there was a terrific storm, a storm only matched by the anxiety in his heart. You see, he had been a preacher for a decade or two but he had gone through a spell where he was unsure of his role and unsure of his faith. He confided in a colleague on the boat who said “then you preach faith until you have it.” Little wonder that after this he began the small accountability group, Wesleyan bands, that would be a weekly meeting place for people to explore the bible and each other’s lives. While large-scale conversions and lived experiences of the divine did take place, for the majority they noticed a gradual growth in the spirituality and their dedication to God known in the church, in each other, and in the natural world. My hope for us is that we preach the New Creation until we have it. That we hope, yearn for something new that redeems the old. That we do the small things that in aggregate can pile up and make a difference.
In conclusion, if Creation is to be renewed, not abandoned, and if that work has already begun in the resurrection of Jesus, Christians must be in the forefront of bringing God’s healing to bear upon Creation in all levels. The Methodist way is one of those quiet, methodical ways. We may not be flashy, we may not have big-time authors or speakers. We are not abolishing the old world; we are being transformed into a new one. The groaning is a sign of hope. So may we groan in our labors. May we groan when we take out the recycling. May we groan when our natural and human worlds fall short. May our groanings be signs of our yearnings for this New Creation to come in its fullness. And may we continue to endeavor, to work, to persevere in spite of the groaning, because behold, through the Spirit we are building something new. Glory be to God. Amen.
Benediction
Lest you think because you’ve done most of the things on your checklist provided by Planet Church, here’s a quote from Bill McKibben: “You’re not a member of the Resistance just because you drive a Prius. You don’t need to go to jail, but you do need to do more than change your light bulbs. You need to try to change the system that is raising the temperature, the sea level, the extinction rate – even raising the question of how well civilization will survive this century.”
Scripture: John 13:31-35 Sermon: New Community, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching Focus: Loving relationships within community, and the call to create community for us all
This Week’s Music
Prelude: Allegro (Concerto in A), A. Vivaldi/J.S. Bach; Jonas Nordwall, organist
Anthem: I Dream a World, Joan Szymko; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
Offertory: Simple Gifts, arr., Kathleen Wissinger; The Sanctuary Bells, Nancy Hascall, director
Postlude: Final (Symphonie # 2), Charles Marie Widor (1844 – 1937)
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Scripture: Romans 8:18-25 Sermon: The New Creation, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching Focus: Social Justice and creation care; moving from “subduing the earth” to “caring for the earth.”
This Week’s Music
Prelude: We All Believe in One God & O Wither Shall I Flee, J.S. Bach (1685 – 1750); Michael Koller, guest organist
Introit: Over My Head, Arr., A. L. Page & J. A. Shafferman; The Cherubs, Nancy Nordwall, director
Anthem: Let The Whole Creation Cry, Frederick Swann; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
Offertory: To the Infinite God, Franz Schubert, text by Mack Harrell; Carol Young, soloist
Postlude: Placare Christe Servulis, opus 38, number 16, Marcel Dupre (1886 – 1971)
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Scripture: John 21:1-19 Sermon: New Work, Rev. Jim Monroe and Rev. Sue Owen preaching Focus: The gift of new life opens up new work and new understandings of work for each of us.
This Week’s Music
Prelude: Fantaisie, Camille Saint-Saens (1835 – 1921); Jonas Nordwall, organist
Anthem: Make In Me, O Lord, APure Heart, Johannes Brahms; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
Offertory: Il est doux, i lest bon (Herodiade), J. E. F. Massenet; Eva Uherek-Cummins, soloist
Postlude: Toccata, Hendrik Andriessen (1892 – 1981)
Jim and Sue, retired pastors from Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference, are serving as Individual Volunteers in Mission through United Methodist Volunteers in Mission in Maua, Kenya. Among their responsibilities is their exciting work at the Maua Hospital and surrounding communities with children orphaned as a result of AIDS. Jim and Sue will be preaching during morning worship Sunday, April 14th. You won’t want to miss their passion, excitement for ministry and faithful responses to God’s calling in their lives!
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Date: April 7, 2013 Title: “New Life”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard Scripture: John 20:19-31
Happy Easter! Oh wait…that was LAST week! Last week we came to an empty tomb with wonder and fear which turned to joy. Last week we sang our “Alleluias!” and put on our Easter best. So now what? Now, it must be “back to normal” for us… or is it?
The bulletin says something else. The bulletin suggests that we are not going “back to normal”, but rather that we are moving forward into a “New Normal”. A New Normal – that is what Easter promises on this Sunday after the fact.
I think the early Christians may have understood this better than we typically do. In the early Church, they were not content to let Easter end on Easter Sunday, In fact, with the celebration of Communion in the early hours of Easter Sunday, a period of joy began for the Church, a period which lasted 50 days. These were 50 days in which they were to remember:
We are saved
We belong to Christ
We give ourselves up to a life of joy as children of God
A New Normal, where we give ourselves up to a life of joy as children of God! Really? Joy every day? Surely, this is what the new life of Easter is all about, if it is about anything at all. It is about choosing to live a life of joy. Frederick Buechner puts it this way when he writes:
“In the Gospel of John, Jesus sums up pretty much everything by saying These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:11) He said that at the supper that he knew was the last one he’d be able to eat. So it is no wonder then, while happiness turns up more or less where you’d expect it – in a good marriage, a rewarding job, a pleasant vacation – joy, on the other hand, is as notoriously unpredictable as the One who bequeaths it.”
Joy is the New Normal of Easter’s New Life. It’s the only thing that makes sense when you think about the disciples after the resurrection. There they were, locked away in their fear. They had plenty to fear, you know… first there were the Roman soldiers and the religious authorities. If Jesus could be so brutally murdered, who knew what might happen to his followers? And then there was Jesus himself! It was weird enough to think of him risen from the dead (that could inspire fear on its own)… what if he held a grudge? I mean, the last time he saw those disciples, they hadn’t been exactly loyal friends. They had not been courageous followers.
So the first disciples had plenty of reasons to be afraid, plenty of good reasons to hide away behind locked doors. But none of that stops Jesus, who flows as easily through their fears as he does through the locks on the doors. And when Jesus greets them with Peace…in that moment, Joy becomes the new normal for us all!
Like Thomas, we may take a little convincing. We may take a little convincing if we are going to choose to give ourselves up to a life of joy. Because we can’t obtain happiness, any more than we can obtain the weather. It comes and it goes – just look outside! It was raining
just a minute ago, But now, I see the sun is shining again. It comes and it goes, it changes; you can’t obtain happiness. But you can stop shooing it away, when you find it outside like a dog, sniffing around the backyard, thinking it might want to come in sometime.
Like Thomas, we are prone to do that, are we not? We are prone to shoo happiness away with our worry or our anxiety, or even our inattention to the present moment. We may shoo happiness away thinking it is someone else’s story – it is not for us. For whatever reason, we all do it, from time to time.
Which is why I appreciate my friend Matt Smith, an improvisational actor, who teaches something he calls “The Failure Bow”, which we are all going to practice today. The first step in learning this technique is to think of a mistake you’ve made recently. Now, if you have a hard time thinking of something, you might just want to ask your spouse sitting next to you there, or your children, or even your friend in the pew behind you. We all have more than enough to choose from, when it comes to mistakes we make. Perhaps you neglected to return a phone call or an email in a timely manner? Maybe you forgot someone’s birthday, or you put recycling into the garbage bin by mistake?
In any event, think about some recent mistake, and then think about how it feels. If you let your body do the bidding for the mistake, you might kind of curl in on yourself something like this. You might assume what my friend Matt calls the “cringe” mode – where it feels like your options are limited, and your vision is narrowed. When you are stuck in this cringe mode, you can’t really see much of the world around you; you can’t imagine much of the possibilities presented to you; it’s hard to move from this position and even hard to appreciate moving.
Again, as Matt says, “You are not likely to invite happiness into your life when you are in cringe mode.” You are highly unlikely to give yourself up to a life of joy when you are stuck in this place, where you cannot see anything other than your mistake and you might even begin to imagine that you ARE the mistake itself.
But here you are – here we all are – and the amazing thing is, Jesus is not deterred by any of our mistakes. Even our deepest cringe cannot keep him from giving us peace or from calling us out of ourselves into a life of joy. So again, with thanks to Matt, here’s what you do…First, you stand up straight. Your mother was right – posture is important. So you stand up straight and tall, and then you throw your arms high up into the air. Not halfway up – Matt says that just says “Don’t shoot!” – but high into the air, go your arms. Next, you add a silly grin on your face as you open yourself up and you become vulnerable to possibility. And then, you say, right out loud – “Thank you! I failed!”
Now, we are going to stand up and practice this – right now. We are going to practice it because there is a lot of intelligence in this room right now. We are all pretty smart (we are Methodists, after all!), and nobody here thinks that their mistake-making days are over. WE all know we have plenty of mistakes yet to make, so let’s have a plan of response! Stand up! Throw your hands high into the air, put on that silly grin, and then on the count of three, shout out Thank you! I failed!
Matt says you can do this anywhere. Now you probably don’t want to walk into an work or a state dinner late and say, “Thank you, I failed”…but you can still fend off the cringe mode. You can reward your own availability to the present moment, your own intention to give yourself up to a life of joy. You can open the backyard gate where that dog has been sniffing around, that dog called happiness. And as Matt says, “You can let it in, even if it means you have to clean up after it. You can let it in, knowing it will be worth it.” It will be worth it to live Easter’s New Life – which it turns out is the life which Jesus wanted to give us all along… a life of joy! It will be worth it.
Scripture: John 20:19-31 Sermon:New Life, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching Focus: How we receive the gift of resurrection in the face of our own doubting and the world’s skepticism
This Week’s Music
Prelude: Adagio in D Major, L. Von Beethoven (1770 – 1827); Jonas Nordwall, organist
Anthem: O Sons and Daughters, Let Us Sing, French Melody, 18th century; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
Offertory: Jesus Chistus, Gottes Sohn from Cantata No. 4, J. S. Bach; Mark Woodward, soloist
Postlude: Toccata, Theodore Dubois (1837 – 1924)
We extend a special welcome to our visitors. Portland First United Methodist Church declares that we will be an advocate for peace in our local communities and world. As a Reconciling Congregation, members of this congregation have pledged to welcome and support all who want to worship with us, regardless of race, gender, class or sexual orientation.
Visit the Coffee Hour after worship today for a tasty treat, good coffee, and lively conversation. It is a great opportunity to learn more about the people and programs of First Church.
Date: March 31, 2013 – Easter Sunday, 11:00 am Title: “Another Chance…And Another” Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard Scripture: Luke 24:1-12
Brady Udall has written a short story entitled “Otis is Resurrected” – about two brothers and the power of love to redeem us and our mistakes. The story begins w/the death of the brothers’ father, who loved animals, esp. the armadillo.
“Not the smartest or the prettiest,” he would say in describing the armadillo, “but the hardiest, the most resourceful”. The one brother is 17 when dad dies; the other, 19 year old Donald, suffers from schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and manic depression.
Donald deals with his grief by taking a bus into Mexico and buying an armadillo for his brother. They named the armadillo Otis and Donald “cared for him, worried over him, tormented him, teased him, then made up with tearful professions of regret and affection.”
Five years pass w/the brothers sharing an apartment with the armadillo, and then the younger one falls in love, and makes plans to marry and move into an apartment nearby. When he tells his brother about this plan, Donald goes wild with grief and responds by trying to drown Otis in the laundry tub. “I unlocked the laundry room door and grabbed Donald from behind, but he resisted, grunting and plunging Otis deeper into the water. I wrestled him out into the living room, where we fell sideways against the couch. Donald twisted away from me and stood up, the water dripping off his elbows, forming a puddle around his shoes. Otis was curled up in a ball, just like when he slept. Donald’s face twisted into a mask of concentrated grief. “See?” he wept. “See what I did?”
I don’t remember if I looked away, or if it was as sudden as it seemed, but one moment Otis was a sad, wet corpse, as dead as an armadillo could be, and the next he was huffing and twitching and scrabbling to his feet. Donald let our an arching shriek which sent Otis zigzagging into the kitchen where a mad chase ensued, Donald slipping and flailing, knocking over chairs and pulling down the drapes, still choking and sobbing, now with relief. He finally herded Otis under the table and once he had pulled him out, he held him up, his fingers locked in a death grip around his little body, and cried, “Otis is resurrected! Otis is resurrected!”
The story goes on to tell of the marriage of the younger brother, and how Donald and Otis live in one apartment while his brother starts a family in a nearby home, where he never quite loses this image of hope…
…a vision of Donald clutching a newly revived Otis, his face slick with tears, transformed from a man twisted inside out with grief, to someone awestruck at the realization that our worst mistakes can be retrieved, that death can be traded in for life, that what has been destroyed can be made whole again.”
This is what resurrection really means when you come right down to it: it is the assurance that you and I can be changed – we can be transformed. Even when we are twisted inside out with grief, we have not reached the end of our story. And we – like those first women who went to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning – are awestruck when we realize that the worst mistakes can somehow be redeemed!
As Dom Crossan and Marcus Borg put it, Easter is God’s revelation of hope. They say, “Easter affirms that the domination systems of this world are not of God and that they do not have the final word.” At Easter, God says “no” to the oppressors, “no” to injustice, “no” to hatred – and “yes” to possibility”, “yes” to freedom, and above all else, “yes” to love.
Regardless of how tightly we are wound, or how deeply we are wounded; regardless of how broken and grief-stricken, fearful and lonely we may be; Easter gives us another chance…and another…to be transformed.
Anne Howard suggests that Mary Magdalene and the other women knew how to tell the story of that empty tomb. It wasn’t all sunlight and daffodils, bunnies and rosey hues of spring out there in the graveyard. Howard writes: “The women talked first about being afraid. And then they told about looking into that dark place and seeing light. That was why they kept looking…” That was how they first found Easter.
That is how we will find it, too. God knows there are plenty of reasons for any of us to be afraid in this life. The domination systems of the world are alive and active in every part of the world. And we each have our own individual moments of uncertainty, confusion, and grief. So that we – like the women – are sometimes afraid. But if we keep looking into our fear, we will be given a chance…and another…and another…to find Easter.
Again, in Howard’s words:
“The women found Easter when they told their story about being afraid and yet looking into the dark place to discover the light. They found Easter again when they dared to keep on telling that story – despite the power of the Empire to stop them.
They found Easter again when they dared to tell the other stories – about loaves and fishes and the good Samaritan and the banquet table. They found Easter again when they carried on the practices that Jesus taught them about sharing their goods and welcoming the stranger and caring for the least among them.”
They found Easter when they stopped being afraid of the dark – as we will, too. After the resurrection, things do not return to normal. That’s the good news of Easter. Once we have peered into the darkness and discovered the light; once we have made friends with our fears and let go of our mistakes, we find that it is not just Jesus’ tomb which is empty. It is also our own.
Those tombs which diminish us and marginalize us; the tombs which limit our possibilities and dash our hopes and belittle our dreams; the tombs which tie us to our addictions and identify us only with our failures…it turns out, they are empty!
Those are the tombs and that is the darkness we need to peer into this day. Don’t be afraid of the dark! The tombs are empty – for we all have been given another chance…and another…and another…for life! Thanks be to God! Amen.
Date: March 31,2013- Easter Sunday, 9:00 am Title: “One More Chance for Life” Scripture: Luke 24:1-12 Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
When my daughter Sarah was only three years old she witnessed a very sad event right in our own front yard. At the time we had a little smooth-haired For Terrier named Ace. Now Fox Terriers are outgoing, alert, active dogs. They were originally bred to be independent hunters, to chase game because they are so quick. Mr. Ace was no exception! Try as we might to keep him on a leash or contained within the house, that dog always wanted to run.
One day, about a week before Easter, Ace managed to escape out the front door just as a large pickup truck was winding its way down our street. Those big, rolling tires proved to be just too tempting for Ace, who undoubtedly thought, “They don’t look very much like foxes, but I’m sure I can catch ‘em!”
So he began to chase – and unfortunately he did catch that truck – or more accurately, it caught him. And of course Ace lost in that transaction. Later that day we were standing together at a make-shift grave out in Ace’s favorite woods, when three year old Sarah looked up at me, sniffling through her grief, and said, “Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring Mr. Ace back home.”
Sarah’s broken little heart was trying its best to put the pieces back together again, to find some hope in the midst of heartache and some joy in the presence of sorrow. Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring Mr. Ace back home…she may have gotten the focus wrong, but little Sarah was definitely onto something as she voiced an archetypal yearning for “one more chance for life”.
There is, deep within each of our hearts, this yearning for new life. Why else do we come to church on Easter morning? Yes, I know – some of you are here out of habit; others have come for a sense of community or for the beautiful music; some of you came because your mother asked you to come. But deep down – isn’t there a desire to know that life – your life – is ore than what you will be able to make of it all on your own? Isn’t there a part of you that doesn’t want to settle fore things as they’ve always been? Isn’t there some small part of you that is holding out hope for transformation, and for one more chance for life?
Bruce Epperly puts it this way:
Resurrection is always personal, even though it is universal in scope. If resurrection means anything – then and now – it means that we must be open to transformation and to the birth of unimaginable possibilities in our midst.
Certainly that was true for the women who came to that now famously-empty tomb. They were not alone in their defeated state. No one expected Jesus to be resurrected – never mind that he several times had predicted his death and his resurrection. Still, no one greeted the first Easter morning with shouts of “Alleluia! Praise God!”, much less by commenting quietly, “I knew it … just like he said!”
Perhaps the real miracle here is that those women somehow found the courage to move beyond their expectations, and to be open to the birth of unimaginable possibilities in their lives. And what about us? Can we participate in such a miracle? Can we find the same courage to open ourselves to transformation? As David Lose reminds us:
Luke says that those who received the testimony of the women regarded their message as an “idle tale”. That’s actually a fairly generous translation of the Greek word “leros”…the root of our word “delirious”.
In short, they thought what the women said was crazy, nuts, utter nonsense. And quite frankly…who could blame them? Resurrection isn’t simply a claim that Jesus’ body was resuscitated; it’s the claim that God entered the stage of human history in order to create an entirely new reality altogether!
No wonder they thought the women were nuts. That can be more than a little intimidating. I mean – if the dead don’t stay dead, then what else can you count on? If it turns out that my own unforgiveable mistakes can truly be redeemed; if the world’s deepest darkness turns out to hold within it some light; if our greatest sorrows actually bless us with a measure of peace; if my most closely held fears are covering up my most improbably joy… then what other rules will God’s love break? What other astounding surprises are in store for any of us? And do we even want to know?
It seems to be a part of human nature, this tendency we all have to go “looking for the living among the dead” from time to time. It is a part of who we are to resist big change, and to fear transformation, even when it opens up amazing possibilities for us.
But it is Easter – Easter, my friends! – and we are being given another chance for life …for life among the living. Russell Rathbun puts it this way:
It is Easter, and you are loved. The soft insistence of Love has overwhelmed all other possibilities, to become the end, the final answer, the destination, the location for our wonderings and wanderings.
It is Easter and Love is possible. It is Easter and you are loved in an inconceivable, irrevocable, uncanny, prodigious way by God.
It is Easter and you are being given another chance for life amongst the living, another chance to truly and completely live. Mary Oliver suggests that is our goal, in her poem, “When Death Comes”, which ends with these words:
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
If I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
Or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
It is Easter – and we are being given One More Chance for Life among the living. Christ is risen! Alleluia! So shall we rise, when we find the courage to go beyond our expectations, and to participate in the birth of God’s unimaginable possibilities. For you – for me – for all of God’s creation. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Join us on Easter Sunday, March 31st, at 9 or 11 am for a triumphant, joy-filled, celebration of hope! Worship will include beautiful music with choir, organ and brass – as well as inspirational messages for real life today.
Children are welcomed with a special message just for them, after which they are invited to a time of activities just for kids. Nursery care is provided for infants and tiny toddlers.
Scripture: Luke 24:1-12 Sermon: 9:00 am – One More Chance for Life; 11:00 am – Another Chance … and Another, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
This Week’s Music
Prelude: La Rejoissance from the Royal Fireworks (1749), G. F. Handel; The Festival Brass; Jonas Nordwall, organist
Anthem: Christ Our Passover, Richard Dirksen; The Chancel Choir and The Festival Brass, Erick Lichte, conductor
Offertory: Worthy Is The Lamb from Messiah, George F. Handel; The Chancel Choir and The Festival Brass, Erick Lichte, conductor
Postlude: Finale (Grande Piece Symphonique), Cesar Franck (1822 – 1890)
At First Church, visitors are always welcomed as new friends. And Easter is a great time to check us out if you’ve been away from church awhile, or if you’ve never ever been to church. Questions? Give us a call! 503-228-3195 – or keep reading the website!
Reconciling Sunday
Join us on Easter Sunday, March 31st, at 9 or 11 am for a triumphant, joy-filled, celebration of hope! Worship will include beautiful music with choir, organ and brass – as well as inspirational messages for real life today. 
